The sweat-soaked red national jersey sticking to his torso is the closest Micheal Madanly has been to the land of his birth in a while. The bloody civil war in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, with rebel fighters turning on the offense against President Bashar Al-Assad in 2012, drove Madanly and his family out of their home, neighbourhood and its familiar alleys leaving them with a fractured, pain-stung hope of a return.
As Madanly's life turned on its head, what remained and sustained him was basketball. He flitted from country to country, living out of the suitcase with his young wife, delaying parenthood, turning out for different national leagues and assuring themselves that something even better lay ahead. "People love to hear our story," Madanly, who's in Bengaluru with the Syrian team for the FIBA World Cup Asian qualifier against India on Sunday, tells ESPN, making light of his past. "But you can trust me when I say that what was shown on TV wasn't the full extent of the destruction in our lives. There's a lot that the world hasn't seen and known about. I want to go back. Go back home soon."
Madanly clears his throat often as he speaks, it's either the unfamiliar weather or the strain of having to narrate a part of his life he'd buried in time. "In 2011 the revolution started," he pauses, quickly corrects himself, "Not revolution but terrorist conflict. I left to play in the China league in 2012 with the thought that I'd come back home after a season. But the situation only got worse and worse and the terrorists got mightier and began occupying more space in Aleppo. They were just 10 minutes away from the centre of the city where our home was and my family lived in fear. I was watching the news all the time...Every time I went for a game or practice I was thinking about this. I didn't know if I could go back alive."
The cruellest blow, though, came when Madanly's brother, a factory manager, was kidnapped by ISIS terrorists and released only after 10 days once his employees paid up a ransom.
"My city is destroyed. I think 70 per cent of it. My home is still there. It hasn't been bombed yet but nobody lives there anymore," Madanly says. His parents have moved to Amsterdam and Madanly, who from China went on to ply his trade in Philippines and Lebanon, finally re-united with his family in Denmark.
"Playing for a Chinese, Filipino or Dutch team is nothing like playing for your land. You play for free for your country but there's so much fire within you." Micheal Madanly
He now plays for the Apollo Amsterdam club, in a country where basketball is not among the most popular sports. "They don't like basketball in the Netherlands. Back home the gym would always be crowded and people would go crazy during matches. But Dutch people come more like they're coming to watch a movie or something. The money is also not like how it's in China. I just earn enough to live."
At 36, Madanly, a guard, is the senior-most member of the side which lost many of its coaches and players to the war over the last few years and the drain shows in the age gap that punctuates the team. The youngest member - Alhosain Hasan, is just 20. "Everything was at a standstill and it's only been two years since they decided to bring the game back to life. The national team comes together in Damascus, because it's a safe city, one week before every tournament but it's still not enough to compete with the best in Asia. We need to have a good league, training camps the whole year and be ready. Those are what we miss," Madanly says.
Before it was shelled, burnt and shot up during the civil war, the ancient city of Aleppo with its covered souks, bath houses, churches, mosques and caravanserais was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Pulling over a fresh jersey over himself, Madanly says being with the national side brings back a flood of memories, of playing before friends, family and fans. He was a big name, a star -- the team's MVP -- who's now leading a life of anonymity in a foreign league. "I know people of my country aren't watching me live anymore. Playing for a Chinese, Filipino or Dutch team is nothing like playing for your land. You play for free for your country but there's so much fire within you," he says.
Once Madanly moved to Amsterdam with his wife they decided to have a family. "We kept packing and moving every five-six months so we couldn't think of having a child even though we badly wanted one. We didn't want the baby to live a life like ours. It's not a good one." He's now father to a toddler girl who's yet to turn two.
A hint of grey hair close to his temples and a few roughened creases on his forehead are the fullest extent of aging in the 192-cm player, not among the most gangly members in the side. "I've been thinking of quitting but I don't want to leave the team where it is right now, when it needs me most and walk away. I want to help the young players learn the game right." What also keeps him going is the dream of a maiden World Cup appearance for Syria. "It's what gets me waking up, getting out of bed and running every day," he says.
Though Madanly longs to go back to his country, he knows that now is probably not the best time. "Sport is something they don't care about right now in Syria. Theirs is a struggle to stay alive."